"GOD AND ECOLOGY
Psalm 104 - Colossians 1: 13-20

GON HH. GROMANAN
JANUARY 30, 1972

"The furnaces of Pittsburgh are cold; the assembly lines of Detroit are
still. In Los Angeles, a few gaunt survivors of a plague desperately til]
freeway center strips, backyards and outlying fields, hoping to raise a
subsistance crop. London's offices are dark, its docks deserted. In farm
lands of the Ukraine, abandoned tractors litter the fields: there is no
fuel for them. The waters of the Rhine, Nile and Yellow rivers reek with
pollutants." (Time 1/24/72, P. 32)

Science fiction? Irresponsible scare rhertoric? Not really. Rather
a direct quote from Time Ilagazine which was reporting a projection for
disaster, based on a new sophisticated computer study of our ecological
future. Wouldn't it be an ultimate kind of irony if the end of human
history came, not in a fiery nuclear holocaust, not even in radiation
poisoning as suggested in Neville Shute's "On the Beach", but in the total
and utter disintegration of man's ability to live in relationship to nature?
Wouldn't it be an ultimate irony if mankind - so fearful of the "Big Bang"
actually terminated with a whimper?

Hell, there is a growing number of experts who feel that this is
precisely what is going to happen: that it is no longer a matter of
debate: that the process of self-destruction is too far along to be reversed
even if we wanted too, which we do not. There have, of course, always been
“dooms-day merchants" - people whose greatest thrill in life is to scare
the pants off someone else. Ny fifth-grade teacher was one of them, a
gentle old lady whose day was incomplete until she had convinced us that
there would probably be no tomorrow. The Russians had just exploded their
first nuclear device and Miss Moan was totally convinced that the next one
was aimed at Altoona, Pennsylvania. And by half past three every day I was
in a state of total despair. Well, my parents got me through that one,
but I've been most skeptical about scare tactics and fear merchants ever

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since, including Billy Graham and Robert Welch and the ecology evangelists.

Yet I feel myself coming around because the people telling us we are in
serious trouble enviromentally are not irresponsible peddlers of fear:

they have no hidden agenda, no personal gain in mind. They are, by and large
highly esteemed men of science, industry and technology. And so I've

begun to listen with a little more concern.

Now, every preacher worth his salt has been on the ecology band wagon
at least once, except this one. I have made references to the topic, but
never before an entire sermon and I'm not sure why, unless it has something
to do with ifiss “oan and my fifth grade distate for hysterical fear.

This morning I invite you to think with me about God and Ecology - for
I am becoming convinced that it is, in fact, the most serious concern
confronting the human family today.

One of the problems in thinking about it, and discussing it, is that
it is so large, so complex and so sophisticated that it boggles the mind.
That, I believe, is part of the dilema. flen of average intelligence can't
seem to find the handle. Men of reasonable good will can't seem to locate
the real issue. lien of responsibility may want to do something, but feel
that it has to be more than buying non-leaded gas. ‘My expertise is very
thin here. There are many of you who have a feel for the individual
prescriptions - and I think you need to share them with all of us.

The pulpit issue - the issue which needs to be raised in the Church
is this: out of scriptures and tradition do we have any wisdom to add to
the debate? Does Christian Faith have anything to say to what is emerging
as man's most urgent problem? The answer is yes - but not a simple one: not
an easy one: rather one that goes all the way back to our basic theology,
our concept of God: and one which will inevitably call into serious question
the most sacred of American sacred cows.

A Christian and Bibilical concern for the ecology goes back to the

basics - to the doctrine of creation. When we talk about God, from the

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point of view of the Bible, we avoid long lists of adjectives, It is very
natural to want to pin God down to a verbal formula, and much theology
has been written with this in mind. fen have always wanted to know and to
understand God, and when they sat down to define him, they piled together
all the superlatives at their disposal. ith the predictable result that
God came out sounding like a super-man. The Bible, however, holds out for
a God who is God - not a man: a God who is personal but not a person.

In the Bible God is known by what he docs and nowhere will we find a
theological effort to contain him in a creed comprised of adjectives.

The Bible begins by affirming that God is Creator. Now, it has been
observed that there is nothing unique about that; and that every world
religion that formulates any kind of God begins with his creation of tne
world. The uniqueness of the Judéo Christian witness is not that God
once created - but that he is $till creating: it is still his world, his
universe, and he is not done with it yet. Somchow that gets missed in the
adolescent argument about whether or not Genesis 1 really tells it like
it is. The point the Bible tries to make about God as creator, is that
he has a permanent relationship with what he has created: that the processes
by which things have come to be are his processes, including evolution.

Our view seems to be that God qot it all started in the beginning:
that creation was a once and for all event: that God made something called
nature and then turned it over - lock,stock and barrel, to man. It's
interesting that in Hebrew there is no word for nature - the Bibilical mind
knew nothing of a natural order apart from the one who created and is
creating it. To say "nature" in the Old Testament, a man simply said,
"What God has made".

That intimate relationship between God and what he has made comes
through clearly in Psalm 104, a Psalm which Professor Joseph Sittler calls
an ecological doxology. In his words “Old Testament ‘ian understood God's

residency with the cattle on a thousand hills, and oil that maketh the

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face of man to shine and wine that maketh glad his heart". God had done it
all: God was doing it all: the whole earth was seen to be full of his
glory, literally.

Part of our insensitivity is that we live several times removed from
creation. "The cattle on a thousand hills, the oi] to make the face shine,
and wine to gladden the heart” have become for us a ilacDonald's Cheeseburger,
a tube of lipstick, and a can of Budweiser. And simple as it may sound
I think the first thing our faith tells us, and the first thing we must
learn is that even these - are the gracious gifts of a God who is part
of his creation.

The Bible insists that God is creating the world: and a serious
concern for ecology begins with a deepened sensitivity to that great
truth. The second thing the doctrine of creation contains relative to
ecology is the role of man in creation.

Ecologists adamantly point out that man's arrogance abeut the world
is what got us into this mess in the first place. And sometry to lay the
blame on the Judeo Christian tradition for teachina that man's first task
is to be fruitful and multiply, and that the world is simply a big vege-
tabje garden for mankind to exploit as necessary.

I take issuc with that. If it is true it is because we have seriously
misunderstood the Bible. For in the Bible God creates man as the final
act, the final step - and plants indelibly in the heart of man his ovm
image. flan is not just another animal - but the Bearer of the image of God:
the being created specifically by God to live in fellowship with him -
and here comes the clincher - to be the manager, the trustee, the steward-
the co-creator with-God. That means that man must learn to live in harmony
with the rest of the created order - but not passivly, not just as another
animal: ratner agressively, turning every skill, every technological
sophistication to the task of managing the property over which we have been

made trustees. That has a lot of implications: all the way from the

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proposal to build the $.S.T. - which If sense will be resurrected in the near
future in the nane of employment and economic devctopmcnt: to the way you
treat the part of creation oncompassea by your or back yard.

That leaas to the third understanding tne Bibic pravides - the ethical
one. Part of tne reason wo have polluted the air and wator and landscape
so badly is that we arc a culture of individualists. Ethically we focus
on individual behavior, and almost by nature are fearful of controls on
corporate behavior. Example: you vouldn't darc collect your waste products
and once a wock dump toam in the Wabash River - but a city can - or a
corporation. You wouldn't dare dig a 59 foat hole in your front yard and
than allow the foul run-off to kill all the vegetation in your neighbor's
yards. But Coal Companies did it a1] over th: mountains of Pennsylvania
and West Virginia.

The Bibte always secs morality on two levels ~ individual and corporate.
The people sin in tne old Testament: individuals arc accountable - but
so are nations. And it is time now for ali of us to begin to bear
responsibility for what is done in our naneant for our sakes - whether by
Standard $i] or the .S. Government.

Finally, the Bible asserts that Jesus Christ is the Lord of Creation.
I read this mornine from the Letters to th Colossians. Listen again to how
it talks about Jcsus Christ. “His is the primacy over all created things...
the whole universe has been created throug? him and for him...." That's
strange theology for us. Its all through the “lew Testament letters - Christ's
reigning over all creation: his supremacy aver ali powers: his Lordship
over nature. But in Hestern Christendom Jesus Christ has been regarded
primarily as a personal savior. ‘lore often than not the way of Christ has
been portrayed as a vay distinct and apart from tne world. But the flew
Testament tnsists tne reigning Lord, viio is also our personal savior, is
also in the business of reconciling, healing, bringing together tne whole

created order. That means that our behayior in relationship to the

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environment has to do with our faith and trust in Jesus Carist. Ecology -
ts a Christian concern.

We nave a serious problem. In tne words of the President of a major
corporation: “We are all too familiar with the catalog of our dilemas:
how our 20th century tccnnology provides us with a once beautiful Cuyahoga
River now so fullof pollution that it catches fire and burns; of a socicty
so affluent and so gorged with the collection of things that the shear
removal of trash becomes a crisis: of a society in which our chosen form
of transport peisons the air: of a society characterized by urban sprav'l
with all its concomitant meanings in terms of the vulgar, the garish, the
unplanned." (Lawrence G. Chait - Stevardship 1971, P. 46)

I have not gone into a long listing of the ways we violate creation.
You know them: they are in the newspaper every night. What I have tried
to do is bring to bear the resourses of scripture and tradition on the issue
at the deepest possible lovel, for it is there that we will make the
decisions necessary to survival. Chanae will happen in our society when it
occurs first in the acarts and minds and benavior patterns of a lot of
committed individual people. People, Tike you and I need to confront the
obvious impossibility of continuce industrial growth, and see that we have
came of age - we arc given in God's time to be the most important trustees
creation nas ever known. You and I, alone, can't alter the policies of the
government or major corporations. But together - with others - we can.

But it begins nara, in tno modast realm of our thoghts, our behavior, our
theology.

There is morc at stake, of course, than mere survival. What is really
at stake is the quatity of life it will te for us as we move through the
years - and perhaps morc important than that - the quality of life our
children will experience and their children after them.

f would hope that 50 years from now - 109 years from now - they will

be here, still breathing, stil] walking through clean white snow, sti7]

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laughing and loving and celebrating the goodness of the creative God. I
would hope they will rcad
“Thou makest grass grow for the cattie......

bringing bread out of the carth

and wine to gladden men's hearts,

oil to make their faces shine”
and know what that means.

That's what's at stake. AMEN

Father, help us to live responsibly: to reject that which is unnecessary and
wasteful. Help us to be good stewards of the earth - so that our children
and their children after them will know the goodness of vour creation:

throug) Jesus Christ our Lord. ALIEi!